I’d I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all the forest, everything? Any food-getter who would not get food for us, him we punished or compelled to starve to death. And very few did that. They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for us, and prepare and administer to us a thousand a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo a thousand satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those days Professor James Howard Smith.

And my lecture courses were very popular that is, very many of the young men and women liked to hear me talk about the books other men had written. And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat. And my hands were soft, because I did no work with them, and my body was clean all over and dressed in the softest garments. He surveyed his mangy goat-skin with disgust. We did not wear such things in those days. Even the slaves had better garments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into the water or go swimming. Neither do you Granzer, Hoo-Hoo retorted. I know, I know, I am a filthy old man, but times have changed. Nobody washes these days, there are no conveniences.

Only the germ is very small, it is so small that you cannot see it. Hoo-Hoo began to laugh.

It is sixty years since I have seen a piece of soap you do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling the story of the Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is, we called it a disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs. Remember that word a germ is a very small thing it is like a woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that you cannot see it Hoo-Hoo began to laugh. You’re a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can’t see. If you can’t see ’em, how do you know they are? That’s what I want to know. How do you know anything you can’t see? a good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see some of them, we had what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put them to our eyes and looked through them, so that we saw things larger than they really were, and many things we could not see without the microscopes at all.

very many of the young men and women liked to hear me talk about the books other men had written.

Our best ultramicroscopes could make a germ look forty thousand times larger. A mussel-shell is a thousand fingers like Edwin’s. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as many times larger was the germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still.